Latch assemblies for motor vehicles are generally well-known in the art. In most motor vehicles, a hood is used to enclose the engine or luggage compartment of the motor vehicle. Such hoods are typically situated so as to be opened from the front of the vehicle and hinged along a rearward edge, such that the hood opens from the front of the vehicle. Such hoods have more recently been provided with dual hood latch assemblies that include a pair of strikers attached to the lower surface near the forward edge of the hood proximate opposite forward corners of the hood. Each of the pair of strikers is situated to interact with and to be restrained by a corresponding one of a pair of latch assemblies attached to the motor vehicle chassis, likewise located proximate the forward edge of the hood at opposite corners of the hood. A latch release handle is typically situated in the occupant compartment, usually near the driver's side kick panel or under the instrument panel. The handle is connected via a pair of bowden cables directly attached to a latch release lever operatively mounted on each of the pair of latch assemblies. Upon actuation of the hood release handle in the occupant compartment, the pair of bowden cables simultaneously pull on each of the latch release levers of each of the latch assemblies, thereby simultaneously releasing the strikers from the primary latch of each of the pair of latch assemblies.
However, dual hood latch assemblies experience certain drawbacks. For example, dual hood latch assemblies inherently suffer from significantly increased hood latch release efforts at the latch release handle inside the vehicle. Not only must the latch release handle operate against two spring assemblies, one in each of the pair of latch assemblies, but the additional length of the pair of bowden cables adds friction force to the handle effort. Also, in order to open both hood latch assemblies simultaneously, additional components and their associated costs and disadvantages are required, such as a splitter cable, to provide a parallel system that actuates each of the release levers on each of the pair of latch assemblies at the same time. The use of such splitter cables also inherently adds additional friction forces to the handle effort. There are further difficulties in routing the bowden cable within the engine compartment, contributing to longer bowden cable lengths and sharp or high angle bends in the cable, thus further increasing release handle efforts. Additional concerns have arisen regarding “snapback” of the hood release handle, particularly if the cable lengths from the splitter to each of the pair of latch assemblies are significantly different. Finally, in such systems, it is possible that only one of the pair of latch assemblies may release upon actuation of the hood release handle due to variations in cable length and kinks in the cable. Hence, a dual hood latch assembly which overcomes these drawbacks would be advantageous.